Roe Company of Canada, found not a single foreign buyer and was cancelled before its mounting costs could eat up the entire defence budget. Howe’s typically grandiose boast that “Canada can manufacture anything!” How can you count the costs of a dream? So was born the myth of the Canadian aerospace industry, fuelled by a heady mix of techno-nationalism and public money, an industry with no particular raison d’être except the near-religious dogma that “Canada must be in aerospace.” (And why must Canada be in aerospace? The aerospace dogma has cost Canada billions of dollars in subsidies, and billions more in misallocated resources and lost output. Faith-based economics be damned: Canada does not have to be in aerospace.

Source: National Post September 28, 2017 00:56 UTC